An Unreliable Germany and the Volkswagen Debacle

Germany’s leading company has toyed with the air people breathe. That’s shocking. In historical context, it’s devastating.

The Volkswagen scandal elicits more than dismay. It is one of those moments when the entire culture of a nation — in this case one of scrupulous honesty, acceptance of rules, reliability, environmental sensitivity and atoning dedication to the common good — is called into question.

Germany is never quite what it seems. There is a strain between its order and its urges. Formality may mask frenzy. When things go wrong, they tend to go wrong in a big way.

Postwar suspicion of it led other European nations and the United States to devote the bulk of their strategic energy to ensuring that Germany would never be all-powerful again. That, in fact, was their overriding concern.

The nation’s Constitution, its federal political architecture, its membership in the European Union, its place in NATO, even its adoption of the euro, were all in some ways constraining measures designed to avoid what has now come about: German dominance of Europe.

This development probably makes Germans themselves and other Europeans uneasy in equal measure. Europe needs leadership. But Germany is reluctant to lead: been there, tried that. Europeans, in turn, are reluctant to be led by a German chancellor. Self-righteous finger wagging from Germany, of the kind meted out in large doses to a near-bankrupt Greece, tends to rankle.

And at this moment, when all eyes are on German leadership — a phrase that long seemed oxymoronic — along comes the company perhaps most synonymous with Germany to install “defeat device” technology on its cars, cheat on emissions tests, spew deadly pollutants into the atmosphere from 11 million diesel cars, and declare in effect that it does not give a damn about people’s health so long as it becomes the world’s biggest automaker.

“I am not aware of any wrongdoing on my part,” said Martin Winterkorn, who quit last week as Volkswagen’s chief executive. “Volkswagen needs a fresh start.”

Talk about tone deaf. The wrongdoing has a name: Nitrogen oxides.

The man who led Volkswagen for eight years says he’s not aware he did anything wrong as he oversaw the biggest corporate scandal in the carmaker’s history — a massive, multiyear exercise in deception backed by persistent obfuscation when confronted with evidence of cheating.

Winterkorn is right. Volkswagen, with its 600,000 employees worldwide, needs a fresh start. Its engineers — adorned with angel wings, no less, in some ads because they were supposedly doing genial things — in fact plotted a nasty scam. But a fresh start won’t come through denial of personal responsibility.

Nor was the speed with which Winterkorn was replaced from within encouraging. It gave the appearance that no time was given to consideration of outside candidates. Matthias Müller, the former head of Porsche who became the new chief executive, is close to the Piëch and Porsche families, who together control a majority of Volkswagen’s voting shares. With a reputation for bluntness, he may prove the best man for the job. But the appointment smacked of cozy arrangements and a quick fix at a time when the company needs a harsh and deliberate appraisal of how things went so disastrously wrong.

Volkswagen is not the first company to cut corners to make money. It is not the first big company to betray trust and show contempt for society. It is not even the first global corporation to demonstrate a reckless disregard for people’s health and the environment. To state the obvious, there is nothing peculiarly German about such behavior.

But there is something peculiarly German about the chasm between professed moral rectitude and reckless wrongdoing, between high culture and low conduct, between angels’ wings and nitrogen oxides; and there is something peculiarly German about the devastating impact this has. Volkswagen should be mindful of the extent of the debacle as it assesses how to rectify the damage to its global clients, itself and Germany. Winterkorn’s throwaway line was shameful.

Germany has been pretty relentless about Greek cheating on its public accounts, tax evasion, nepotism, lax work habits and the rest. It had a case. Greece did all the above to get itself and the eurozone into their current hole. But its prescription — be more like hardworking, honest, reliable, virtuous Germany and get there through austerity alone — was far too rigid, and now all those lessons about cheating smack of gross hypocrisy. Leadership from the new Germany will fail if the temptation to hand out lessons is not resisted.

Earlier this year the chairman of another major German company, Lufthansa, initially insisted his company had done everything right after the co-pilot of its Germanwings jet deliberately crashed in France, killing himself and the other 149 people on board. Then he backed down and apologized for an oversight.

It’s time for some serious German soul-searching. Leadership demands that.